As the mirrored ball dropped and the crowd counted down – three, two, one – 3-year-old Aimee White chewed on the wrong end of her noisemaker, waiting anxiously for the ball to hit zero and the moment she’d been looking forward to.
It wasn’t the ceremonial start of the new year, but Noon Year’s Eve Sunday at the Denver Children’s Museum. When the ball finally stopped and the confetti cannon blew, Aimee and dozens of other tykes began jumping up and down on a long sheet of bubble wrap. And Aimee looked like a kid who had gotten a second helping of Christmas morning.
“It’s pretty fun,” Aimee’s mom, Jackie White, said of the event.
“We almost didn’t come because of the snow,” said Shonna Sveen-St. John, a friend of White’s who brought her two daughters. “But I’m glad we were able to make it.”
About 2,000 people attended the Noon Year’s Eve event, which featured musical and dance performances and four different countdown ball drops. Despite the piles of snow in the parking lot, that number was about the same as last year, said Caryn Gracey Jones, a museum spokeswoman.
“Some people had cabin fever,” Gracey Jones said. “And this lets them work out the winter wigglies.”
Across Denver on Sunday, restaurants, clubs and hotels hosting New Year’s Eve parties mostly said the recent snow did not have an impact on the expected attendance at their events. Several party hosts said those who backed out of New Year’s plans because of the snow were quickly replaced by those itching to get out of the house.
The Denver Grand Hyatt hotel sold out the tickets to its bash. The Adam’s Mark Hotel expected a full house.
“I don’t really think it’s going to have that big of an impact,” said Xena Waite, the bar manager at the Mercury Cafe, which had music, dancing and an erotic poetry festival. “… I think everybody’s probably pretty restless after being cooped up Thursday and Friday.”
Brian Sifferman, the general manager at Corridor 44, which Sunday night was to host a bubbly-infused blowout, said people were calling throughout the day to see if he still had reservations available.
“I think a lot of people with the weather and everything were putting it off, trying to figure out what to commit to,” he said. “But with the weather being pretty fair the last couple days, we’re going to be fine.”
Sarah McClean, a spokeswoman for the Downtown Denver Partnership, said crews got a practice run preparing for revelers when the first major December storm hit before Christmas. When the second storm hit, the partnership had new ice slicers and a new tractor to handle the work.
“We had even less snow this time, so it really hasn’t affected us at all,” she said. “If anything, it’s affecting people’s perceptions of what downtown will be like.”
Nonetheless, McClean expected about 185,000 people to cram the 16th Street Mall on Sunday night to watch one of two fireworks displays. Mayor John Hickenlooper said snow-removal crews had worked hard to make downtown hospitable for the holidays.
“Our hope,” he said, “is that people go out and enjoy themselves, but be careful.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
